I tend to do branded goods shopping for the family - quite often at Walmart. Other family members go to local grocery stores for fresher produce. I could not tell you what the price of lettuce is, but I do keep an eye on Charmin and Gillette and Duracell pricing.

Last month, I wrote I was shocked Walmart was so much more expensive than amazon when it came to Mach3 cartridges. Since then I have become even more vigilant.

Travel size shaving cream. Gillette and Edge last year 99c (overpriced already for a 2.5 oz can). Last few weeks no Gillette in stock, so Edge raises prices to 1.49 a can. Price Increase of 50%.

Aberrations? I hope so. Walmart is the price leader and other retailers follow its benchmarks- if it allows products to go up 29 and 50% over the last few months, $ 4 gas will look real cheap in contrast.

Jeff Mann of Gartner describes the mammoth effort that goes into planning and delivering its Symposium around the world.

Fascinating to see how that institution survives (and thrives) even as the tech industry morphs:

Virtual conferences and telepresence? Ha! "Nothing beats the 5 days, hundreds of sessions and chance to mingle with thousands of your peers. We even have an event justification worksheet to help you defend to your boss why you need to go."

Balloting and crowd sourcing of session and speaker ideas? More ha! "Our analysts are the best - we don't need more speakers or session ideas."

Speakers with personal blogs and other social networks? Blog/Schmlog! " A few of our analysts do blog (15% of analysts in this track) but their value add is they are experts in their spaces. Come meet them in person"

In the 90s at Gartner I wrote a paper on ERP Upgrades "Refuleing in Mid-air"

"Because the software is now in production, little downtime can be tolerated. Thus, our analogy to refueling a plane in mid-air - it cannot be landed, just slowed down. Similar to that deceptively simple procedure, the upgrade cutover process must be frequently rehearsed and flawlessly executed. Upgrades carry an additional risk - typically, few vendor or systems integrator resources are really up to speed with the new release."

Over a decade later Jon Reed, a SAP implementation veteran makes some of the same points and adds to them

"Treat the SAP upgrade as a whole new implementation."

"Bring in outstanding consultants in specialized areas that are integral to your SAP upgrade."

In other words, still deja vu all over again.

A decade ago, companies did not have a choice. Today with SaaS and in-background, incremental upgrades they do. Why do they not escape from the treadmill ? And why do on-premise vendors not behave as if the escape is a viable strategy?

The New York Times has a disturbing story about the invisible older generation of immigrants. “They never win spelling bees,” “They do not join criminal gangs. And nobody worries about Americans losing jobs to Korean grandmothers.”

"Many are aging parents of naturalized American citizens, reuniting with their families. Yet experts say that America’s ethnic elderly are among the most isolated people in America. Seventy percent of recent older immigrants speak little or no English. Most do not drive. Some studies suggest depression and psychological problems are widespread, the result of language barriers, a lack of social connections and values that sometimes conflict with the dominant American culture, including those of their assimilated children."

Starting in the 60s, family reunification became a major driver in our immigration. Previous generation of immigrants came alone, were younger, could handle the rough path of assimilation into the country a lot better, and paid their way for the social services they qualified for. And they accepted the fact that they were leaving their extended families behind. It is a deliberate choice they made.

Cold as it sounds, I think we need to go back to de-emphasizing love (or lottery) as a driver in our immigration. Immigration is a competitive tool, and we should be using it to attract the best labor for our country's needs - with the realization that it is a constrained number, and increasingly unpopular.

As for my immigrant friends, think long and hard about reuniting your elderly parents here. They deserve better than to be cheap babysitters here. With the comforts of Skype and cheap international travel you can have the best of both worlds - let them live where they are most comfortable, and yet you stay in close touch with them than previous generation of immigrants ever could.

And save the limited immigration slots for fellow, deserving, talent based immigrants.

The dull roar in the background of course, keeps asking - is the proprietary (even if managed by an outsourcer) DC approaching its twilight as SaaS and cloud infrastructure continue to grow at phenomenonal rates?

If it is, it sure is a glorious twilight as I wrote earlier when Cisco announced its entry with Unified Computing

"From new space design to green computing to virtualization to remote management to consolidations to clouds, the DC has been a hotbed of activity."

Elevator opens - I walk in. The man at the back winces ever so slightly. I say hello, turn my back to him thinking his reaction was totally natural with all the violent deaths in his family. This man must die a few deaths a day. What keeps him going in full public view?

The man was Senator Ted Kennedy. People call him a coward for Chappaquiddick. I think he was brave - almost foolishly so for getting involved in so many areas he could have easily avoided.

Like mine. His office helped me on a personal matter when the congressmen from the State of Texas I then lived in showed little interest in.

And countless healthcare, immigration, race and other issues he could have played spineless politician on.

When he conceded in the 1980 Presidential race, I was wowed by Tennyson and everything in his Dream On speech. 3 decades later I am much more conservative in my leaning - but we need more like him. Wear your positions on your sleeves and let's argue it out. No safety in hiding.

Last week I wrote about telco-double dipping. Then I boarded a flight and thought about the prospect when Wi-Fly becomes more mainstream. Can you imagine the evil when airlines, no slouches themselves when it comes to exotic fees, team up with telcos?

Then I read about Nokia Money aimed at payments for people with no bank accounts – apparently 4 billion mobile phones outstrip a billion or so bank accounts around the world. Imagine banks banding together with telcos?

Oracle’s lawsuit against SAP was really to understand the economics of third party maintenance. Now that it is seeking more information from Rimini, that’s when it dawned on me. Oracle is really trying to understand what it takes to offer services at half its pricing.

Expect it to launch a competitive plan soon, now that it has been educated :)